In East Dulwich in 2007 I would like to see...

[Mark]

To follow up Sara's post above ("You too can get things changed if you want, just attend a few Community Council meetings...":

Dulwich Community council

Next scheduled main meeting:

Date: Monday January 29, 2007, 7pm, Christ Church, 263 Barry Road SE22

Next planning meeting:

Tuesday January 9, 2007, 7pm, Christ Church, 263 Barry Road SE22

Click here for the council's website if you want more details

[val]

There is a really good restaurant near The Plough, Le Moulin, good quality food, lots of choice and reasonably priced

[Guest]

For the East dulwich to be stormed by the residents of Peckham and the new lamposts, Grass, good schools, newly laid roads, armies of street cleaners etc to be stolen back. We all pay council tax just because the liberals are in charge of the council and all live in ED can you spend some of our money somewhere else? excuses like yes but we have to spend a lot more money on crime and Graffiti in Peckham is very 80's. If you give them shit schools, then you should expect mayhem when their older, this should be paid for at government level. Then maybe we can all get some tastfull surroundings and a gay bar or two ..........

[Guest]

Blimey you have a point, When you read some of the responses above it does make us sound very pretentious. I think maybe we should all get out more. Buggy free lanes????....christ we really have all given up on the rest of society....

[Mony Vibescu]

Can I put in a word in defence of Hirst's the bakers - their bread is better than you can get from any supermarket and they've never been anything but polite to me.

An M&S food hall would be bad for ED - taking money away from proper food shops by selling bland, packaged junk at inflated prices. Somerfield since its revamp is far better than M&S.

Much more welcome would be some sort of clothes store on Lordship Lane - there don't seem to be any men's clothes in the area (apart from the little gent's outfitters near the station, which I must admit I've never investigated) and very little for women either. If M&S have to open here, I'd rather be able to buy their socks and pants than their cook-chill meals.

North Cross Road should be closed for an expanded market on Saturdays as a first step to opening it on more days of the week.

Bob, if you're looking for a really good local restaurant, have you been to Le Chardon? Highly recommended.

[Guest]

Better opening times and extended regular adult lane swimming for the ED Pool.

It's ridiculous that swimming, by far the best all round exercise there is (never mind all these gym requests!) has such restricted hours in Dulwich. Most of the Pool's daily schedule - as has been noted before here - is taken up with kids, babies, schools, women only, ethnic and other sessions, meaning that the average non-minority swimmer can get into the pool only at very specific times, which makes it very difficult to attend as regularly as one would like. Much as such sessions are laudable, it's simply not practical for them to take up most of the opening hours of the one municipal, non-membership pool we have, which should be for everybody. The baths also seem to close earlier and earlier at weekends.

Really it ought to be possible for the majority of people to be allowed to go swimming at almost any time of day. Shouldn't it? Fancy a swim mid-morning? mid-afternoon? just for instance... Not possible most days. Shouldn't a public pool really offer that facility? Public health would surely benefit.

[Ant]

Mony: you can get clothes - men's and women's - in Ed on North Cross Rd. Not a huge selection but at least it's something.

[dulwichmum]

I agree with Mony, we are so lucky to have Somerfield on Lordship Lane. In West Dulwich when the small supermarket - 'Superfoods' got taken over, it was replaced with a dayglo Tesco, with its forumula of strip lighting and bright white and blue shop front. Somerfield is much easier on the eye and is certainly better since its revamp than what was there before. It blends in well with the other shops on Lordship Lane. Not everyone in Dulwich can afford to shop in M&S for food, and so I suppose Somerfield is a better evil than Tesco. There are large numbers of pensioners and young families living on low incomes in Dulwich, not everyone is in a good financial position, and Sainsburys is half way up a hill and set so far back from the road if you have to walk. It would be a genuine hardship for some people to get up there if M&S took over Somerfield:).

[batdog]

Booby P,

As I previously posted elsewhere in this forum, the Police Station should go completely ( As it is used now is a pure waste of taxpayers money, whenever you call 999 is the Peckham control centre and patrols that come to ED not the ED cops.... ) and be replaced by a modern leisure centre including a 25 or 50 mts pool ( for adults ) and maybe close to it a small one for kidzzz....

Swimming keeps body and ...brain healthy and active.... so keep swimming.....

[morty]

you're in luck. i noticed a sign up in Browns antique shop window (recently closed down)for a new fishmonger opening. Moxons. It'll be opposite william rose.

[morty]

maybe you should move to clapham?

why iceland to close?

[Guest]

I have to agree. I don't understand the hatred for Iceland... go and compare the price of their extra virgin olive oil with Somerfield's and you might be surprised... The question is whether being seen with an Iceland bag bothers you that much (I couldn't care less personally).

[Guest]

Iceland has itself to thank for its own poor image (Kerry Katona advertising a sack of gruesome party vol-au-vents for 32p.. mmmm!). Which is a shame cos there's nothing wrong with Iceland. It sells a load of brand name stuff most people go for anyway, a bit cheaper than the supermarkets. At least it's usually well-stocked.. unlike Somerfield. And this isn't a complaint about not being able to buy foie gras and Aqua Libra.. it runs out of 'the basics' - regularly. I popped in to SF a few weeks back to buy frozen peas, butter and parsley and was amazed to find all three absent. It was exactly the same with the Somerfield where I used to live before ED. Rubbish!

[Guest]

OK, Here's my wish list:

1) a co-operative supermarket like that one in Manchester someone mentioned

2) a decent vegetarian restaurant

3) a laid-back, friendly gay bar or pub

4) another clothes shop - vintage or cool, interesting clothes (not bland designer fleeces)

[Jamma]

I'd like to see the library end of Lordship Lane tidied up a bit. Anyone any ideas what the big hollow building (above the car accessories shop) is going to be?

And continued success for Dulwich Hamlet FC. Riding high at the moment and hopefully that'll get more people through the doors. Nothing like a successful football team to foster community cohesion.

[Keef]

I'd like to see someone who was born in or around the area affording to buy themselves a house, or even a flat in their own area....

However, this would seem unlikely, so we'll all move up to Sydenham to make room for those from leafy surrey ;o)

[Guest]

Don't worry, you can sell your house in Sydenham in a few years when that shoots up in value and makes a bundle, like everywhere else does in London, eventually.

Just like the original owners of houses in ED must have done.. those salts of the the earth we keep hearing about.

I expect half of them live in Surrey now.

[mockney piers]

@Jamma, yes indeed, good stuff. 518 through the gate against Dover on sunday which is almost unheard of numbers.

I've been more or less a regular for about 6 years, and this is the first season where we've (for a couple of seasons is enough for we status I reckon) been consistently playing football, let alone playing it well!!

More of the same please.

And if a few people complained about chain shops less and came along, then maybe a real community could be had as opposed to people shutting themselves up in their little castles and hanging around forums all day ;?P

@*Bob* I suspect one of them, namely Keef, lives in Sydenham now, and salt of the earth he is.

[not2late]

Might you be making this up?

That aside, I agree that they could be available for more of the time and they could do with a complete refurb or at least a good clean once in a while.

[Bobby P]

not2late

I might indeed be making up the "ethnic" swim, at least looking at their winter schedule (although apparently their 'women only' swim is partly to cater to Muslim women who can't swim if there are men around...). The actual list of pool-hogging activities this month - and don't get me wrong, all these are fine - except that they close the whole pool for hours each day to general swimmers - consists of "adult/child lessons, jelly babies, schools sessions, water aerobics, 50+ swimming, canoeing lessons, swim school, women only swims ... " and for some reason they close the pool entirely in the middle of Wednesday for "staff training". Wonder why they can't either close an hour earlier or open an hour later to accommodate this training, rather than chucking everyone out mid-afternoon and letting them in 60 minutes afterwards!!!

[batdog]

Bobby P,

While you wonder about their closing time I wonder why they have never been awarded the Nobel Prize for "Intelligence"....

[Guest]

it would be great to go in a pub without screaming snotty nose kids.

get rid of the dirty dingy chemist at the roundabout and please lets have a nice clothes shop that caters for all people not just stick insects.

[Guest]

Keef

You made a remark about not being able to afford to buy a house or flat in your own area, yet you seem very able to afford an internet connection to post comments on this site. Of course, you may also just be sneaking in your internet fix at work, in which case you still seem to be working for a company affluent enough to be able to afford you the luxury of website browsing.

;-)

[Guest]

Hmmm..

Internet connection.. ?10/month.

House in ED.. getting-on for around the half million mark.

I dunno if the cutting back on broadband will solve the problem here.

[Huguenot]

One bed flat went recently for 275,000 - so assuming that a raid on a Sydenham speakeasy could net you the minimum deposit of 13,250, the cheapest mortgage you could get would be a 25 year interest only mortgage still requiring payments of over 1,500 per month.

Michael mate, if that's what you're paying for your internet connection I suggest exchanging for two cups, a bit of string and shouting boop boop down it.... ;-)